300 EEMARKS ON THE BOCK DOVE. 



again ferried over the river. Tranquillity still prevailed; the sky bright 

 and clear; the moon, nearly at the full, shone with silvery lustre; no 

 mist or vapour hung over the river or meadows. It was scarcely twilight, 

 and every object around could be distinctly seen. Numbers of birds were 

 still flitting over and about the river, but I did not notice them partic- 

 ularly until after quitting the boat, when I was puzzled in thinking what 

 species they could be of; surely not of the Swallow tribe, although they 

 wheel about and flit upon the water, their motions are different and 

 slower; besides, thought I, my friends the Swifts must be all thoroughly 

 tired and gone to rest. Upon closer observation I was satisfied they were 

 all Bats. I never before saw so many of these animals at one time — 

 where could they all have come from? Probably they all congregate 

 under the extensive roofs of the clothing mills, or in the deep banks of 

 the river and canal, and are now induced to come out by the fineness 

 of the evening. They appear to me larger and longer in the wings than 

 any I have noticed before. I must inquire more about these same Bats. 



REMARKS ON THE ROCK DOVE, WITH REFERENCE 

 TO ITS CLAIMS AS A SPECIES. 



BY HENRY PAYNE, ESQ., M.D. 



In the domain of ornithology there is no more difficult question for the 

 naturalist to determine than the differences of species, so endless is the 

 variety one meets with in particular species. There are birds marked as 

 distinct from each other, on apparently fallacious grounds, and when I read 

 the descriptions of them I think I see a well-defined species; but after 

 maturer study the supposed species dwindles into a mere variety. This 

 has been particularly the case with the so-called Rock Pigeon, a variety of 

 the genus Columba, which may be traced to the agency of arts, under 

 whose tuition nature can assume we know in this genus and the allied 

 gallinaceous birds, variations in shape, size, and colour, which never fail 

 to delight every one, but which lead the scientific inquirer sometimes into 

 a labyrinth of perplexities and "historic doubts." Should a bitch by any 

 accident lose her tail, she may have puppies without tails, but we have no 

 right on that account to proclaim the occurrence of a new species. Most 

 of the wild or farm Pigeons have a white patch over the loins — a mark 

 of domestication, but all are not so distinguished. You shall see some of 

 the brown ones and dark blue ones without a single white feather over the 

 rump. Besides if so trifling a mark is to be taken as diagnostic of species, 

 we shall have no end of them. The little Sparrow-Hawk, with plumage like 

 a Cuckoo's, and no brown about it, would rank as a separate species; so it 



